Can using higher rated battery damage device?

Question

I am in need of a battery for my Lenovo 3000 Y410 Laptop. It's installed battery has voltage rating of 10.8v. But the shop i've consulted has only a battery of 11.1v rating.

Should I buy the battery? I mean, Does using that battery can damage my laptop?

An answer with some good source from hardware vendor will be very much helpful. Please do not just put your opinion. Because I do not see any difference in your opinion and my opinion. My opinion is also "It is bad". But I need some reliable source.

Answer 1

Alright. So, I knew what I knew, but after reading and responding in here I wanted to break out the volt meter and test a few things. Just to be sure. But I'll get to that.

I've got a 2004 Toshiba Satellite A75 sitting up in the kitchen as the general purpose computer for me and the wife. I've got three batteries for it. Why? Well, I've got the original (still holds a charge) and two replacements for those times when I might be away from a power outlet but still might want to use it.

The Original Toshiba battery is 14.8v/6450mAh. The first replacement (I didn't purchase it) is a generic 14.8v/4400mAh. The replacement I did purchase is a RayOVac made 14.4v/6600mAh battery. It is sitting in the laptop at this moment, and is the battery I've used for more than a year now.

So, from personal experience I can say that using a battery with a slightly different voltage rating will NOT HARM YOUR LAPTOP. Heck, we are talking about running a laptop on a battery that puts out 14+ volts, that NORMALLY runs on 19 volts DC from the power adapter.

Oh, and all three batteries are designated as Li-ion

Now, as to the testing. I took a Li-ion battery from an LG phone... and the battery is designated as an LG battery (not a third party replacement) that is Li-ion and rated at 3.7v. It tested at 3.71v. So, I took a Li-ion battery from a Motorola phone. It was rated at 3.6v. It tested at 3.75v. Interesting. So, I took my stack of Li-ion batteries that I have for my Panasonic digital video camera. The one that came with it (printed as a Panasonic battery) is rated 3.6v, and tests as 4.09v. One of the replacements that is designated 3.7v tests at 4.11v. Another replacement designated at 3.7v tests at 4.03v

So, I checked the battery in the tester to make sure it was still good. Then I re-calibrated it. Then I tested a couple of DC power adapters just to be sure, and then rested all those same batteries. (Edit I also tested a mess of Alkaline AA batteries. We keep a stockpile of new ones for cameras, Xbox360 controllers, etc. All tested between 1.4 and 1.6 volts.)

So, again. What am I saying? I am saying there is NO problem with getting that battery. Provided that the battery casing was made for your laptop... meaning it will actually fit properly in your laptop. It is not going to hurt your laptop to use the 11.1v battery. I repeat. It is not going to hurt your laptop to use the 11.1v battery.

Answer 2

You can actually find 3.6v, 3.65v, 3.7v and 3.8v nominal voltage Li-ion cells. The slight voltage difference is due to variances in chemical composition from one cell to another. The manufactures original tooling date also has a bearing on the voltage rating. This is the rated average voltage of the cell at 0.2C load down to its cutoff voltage usually about 2.75V.

About 11-12 years ago Li-ions were only charged to 4.1V and the mean/average voltage under load was 3.6V. More recently those same 3.6V cells with an identical chemistry are usually re-labed as 3.7V depending on the manufacturer and the batteries prime use of application. The reason for the .1V increase is when you recharge those same cells to 4.2-4.25V instead of 4.1V the rated average voltage of the cell also increases some.

The assumption that it’s just a marketing gimmick, is completely incorrect

Answer 3

Yes it can damage your laptop. But considering it's only 0.3V difference and assuming your laptop would actually turn on with the new battery, you might just experience extra heating in your laptop.

Anyway I wouldn't recommend buying a battery with higher voltage, look for another shop or just buy it online.

Refer to this question for more information Using a 20V power block on a 19V notebook

Answer 4

If you search Google you will get different answers, but I can tell you from experience, that if you get a battery with a higher voltage rating it will not work correctly in the laptop, and it may harm your laptop, and the battery. You need the correct voltage for your laptop. Now if Lenovo has an option to a different battery, I would ask them. The battery that you have is a 6 cell, check to see if they have an 8 cell.

Answer 5

I wouldn't buy a battery from a vendor who offered you another voltage for the same model. Laptop batteries are by total capacity NOT by voltage, and there's a good chance something is off if its a battery of different voltage.

The battery connectors for a laptop are specific to both the laptop brand and often the model as well. Your vendor seems fishy - a quick check shows the standard battery for the model - the 43R1955 - see the post by Mark Lenovo - is 10.8V. DO NOT BUY A BATTERY OF ANY OTHER VOLTAGE.

Answer 6

The battery voltage is fine. The voltage on your OEM battery will be almost 13V when fully charged.

But, most batteries rated at 10.8V are Li-ion, those rated for 11.1V may be a different Li chemistry. That's a complete show-stopper. Your laptop charging circuit is designed for lithium ion batteries only, the logic for supplying the right current and detecting when the battery is fully charged will only work for Li-ion batteries. A different chemistry will not behave exactly the same and may be overcharged, resulting in loss of mechanical integrity (i.e. battery bits all over the inside of your laptop) or a fire.

Although I was under the impression that Li batteries other than Li-ion aren't rechargeable... so probably your suggested replacement battery IS Li-ion just like the original. But do verify that the chemistry matches, you want to be absolutely sure.

Pinout and power connector are of course critically important also -- having a battery connected backwards is no joke, either for the connected electronics, or the battery itself when it begins to charge.

Beyond electrical compatibility, there may or may not be some DMCA "smart battery" IC designed to prevent you from using a non-OEM battery. But in that case it just won't work, nothing would be damaged.

Answer 7

I was browsing for other information, but came across this thread and just wanted to drop in some details regarding batteries. There's some great information on here already, but I just had a few points make :-)

The voltage difference between the 10.8 and the 11.1 batteries is negligable on any laptop. There are changes in voltage in 'all' batteries as a natural part of what they are, but beyond that, batteries drop in power anyway as they discharge and only the circuit they are fitted to will decide if it's flat or not enough to work it (until the battery just cannot work any longer).

How does any laptop know the battery is going flat? It tests voltage, amd when it finds it's getting too low, it shuts down (or just goes off without warning - that's it's 2nd layer of auto-off, 1st level is a warning with OS shut down, 2nd level is full off to avoid lower voltage causing data problems while reading/writing. To leave a circuit on a laptop struggling on a low battery with (for example) 7 volts, could cause all kinds of data corruption, so the best thing is just instant off - then it's far more likely to just stop what it's doing. Losing power slowly could cause a hard drive to smear data (in theory) across a drives platter ARRGGGHHH disaster!

It had been mentioned here about voltages on laptops being 19v, so why is that? Well this isn't mentioned much but is important to realise....

No circuit uses 19 volts. Check on components and you instantly see 1v, 3v, 5v 9v, 12v etc. Now where does your 19v laptop fit in then?

Well its for power and safety - no laptop uses more than 12v, and most voltages are 5v, or lower like 1.3 for CPU's and things like RAM. If that 12v part needs power and your charger was 12v, you'd be straining the whole circuit - that's no good. So you have 19 volts, to power the 12's, and the 5's, and the other lower voltage parts, and also, of course, that all important trickle charge to the battery (usually between 1.5 and 3.5 volts to charge things with, 3.5 being Fast Chargers - not used on laptops).

The bit to note is, all the voltages are 'nearly' things. None of it is precise at this level, only things like RAM, data lines and CPU/GPU have 100% precision on voltages. The rule on such techinical circuits is - always have a little more power than you need just in case, but always have a protected voltage level anyway.

Consider the old fashioned and well used 7805 voltage regulator - you can slap 35+ volts into them, and the just casually give you 5volts output and laugh while doing it. That's your circuit protection from high voltages right there.

Laptops, both battery and mainboard, all have more modern versions of the same kind of thing inside them.

And also, I happily put 11.1 or 14.4 batteries in several makes of laptops without any difference or problem. As an example, I have here on my desk a Packard Bell MIT-SABLE-C, that happily uses either voltage, and I have 6 batteries I've been testing on it, All do the same thing, because the higher voltage battery has less amp, so the power level at the end all stays about the same.

Answer 8

There is no difference in a 10.8 and 11.1 volt battery for a laptop, some manufacturers choose to rate each cell higher or lower voltage but they are all the same actual usable voltage.